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Mixing Agile and PMI: The Time Has Come
Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.
The new PMI Agile Community gets officially launched at the August 2009 Agile Conference in Chicago. To some people this may seem an unlikely alliance, to many it will bring useful connections.
Just as agile zealots like to berate the command-and-control nature of some PMI approaches, old school managers condemn the seemingly unstructured techniques practiced in agile. In reality, projects and organizations are complex and a smart mix of approaches is required to be successful. Really, who does only pure agile and who does only pure waterfall or command-and-control projects, anyway?
Yet as humans we are drawn toward others with similar mindsets, and factions of opposing views can result from collections of perfectly reasonable individuals. The magnetic attraction to like-minded people is a strong force as we reinforce ideas and build our knowledge from each other. Bringing another group together with the first group often results in magnetic polar repulsion: “They’re not like us! Look at the ridiculous practice they follow! We are much better!”
It is easy to retreat to your own group, but some great things have been built by balancing opposing forces (linear propulsion, electric motors, etc.). Fortunately a large enough group of people recognize that there are valuable tools to be learned and reused from both sides of the PMI Agile…
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